This is a sermon delivered at Mira Vista United Church of Christ on 9/25/2011. The scripture was Revelation 22:1-5 "Then the angel* showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life* with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants* will worship him; 4they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign for ever and ever."
A crystal clear river peacefully running down the middle of the street, light glistening off its waters, it feeds two huge trees that seeming brake out of the ground and shooting upward to the sky. These trees provide cooling shade, more they provide to all in this place fruit and healing. It really is a beautiful image of hope provided to us by the rich symbolism of the scripture today. I have a confession though, when I first read this image for this week it struck a sense of discord within me. The world we live in seems so far away from this image. If you follow the news, you hear everyday about the pollution of rivers, species of fish in danger of extinction, rampant deforestation, and human injustice to one another. The world seems to be crying out. I find myself asking where is the “healing of nations” talked about in the scripture because our world could really use some of that right now.
The reality is that we live in a broken world, a world that is not how we would have it and I believe one that is not the way God would have it. So as people living in a reality of brokenness, what do we do when confronted with the beautiful hope in the image from today’s scripture? We find this scripture very near the end of the Book of Revelation. Revelation is a book full of images and metaphors of a broken world. The author of this book identifies himself as an exile on the island of Patmos. He uses symbolic images to write about the brokenness of the very world he sees around him. The symbols in Revelation critique an Empire which has begun to care more about its wealth than its people, it critiques the deep injustice than within the system, and it speaks to a profound sense of powerlessness in the face of these things. Any of these things sound familiar. Yet out of this profound brokenness rises this image of deep and lasting hope. When we examine this image it is one that speaks directly to who we are as people of faith.
The first thing to notice about this image is that it is not an image about escape in some distant future, rather it is an image rooted in the here and now. This is not an image about hope for a heaven that is light years away, but rather hope for our everyday existence. We see this in the language the writer of Revelation chooses. We see the river of life, running down the middle of the street right there in the middle of our everyday path, we see the trees of life shooting up toward the sky in my spiritual imagination they are breaking through the concrete, breaking through the ordinary, those boundaries of our world that seem to keep hope out. It brings “the healing of the nations.” In choosing these images the author is calling on the natural world that is right around us. He is telling us through symbol that God’s divine presence is already in our midst; that we need not look far for hope because it is right here in the very ordinary things in our lives.
It doesn’t surprise me that the author of Revelation uses water at the center of his symbol of God’s hope in the very here and now. As a church, in baptism, water acts as a symbol of God’s presence in the life of the one being baptized. It seems water has a way of teaching us about our connection with the present moment and our connection with the divine. The Lakota Story teller Joseph M Marshall III recounts how his Grandfather taught him about the interconnectedness of all things and the divine. He was with his Grandfather near the river and they were throwing stones into that river. As they throw the stones his Grandfather pointed out the circular ripples that were created. “In the circles, there is no first or last, no higher or lower… The river was teaching me that no one or no thing is higher or lower than any other form of life. We are all connected…It is the acceptance of such a simple reality that we are a part of all species in the world.” He goes on to describe how the river taught him of hope because while it is constantly changing it is also constantly there. This connection speaks of a hope that is right near us and in us, in our connection with the earth and our connection with God.
This sense of hope being right in our midst, this sense of God with us makes me think of one of the most important scriptures for the Jewish faith, the Shema, which you heard me say earlier in Hebrew. “Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” The shema is at the center of the liturgy of Shabbot service and in many ways at the center of Jewish spiritual practice. It is a reminder of a God that is not far off but is rather right here. The word translated as one in English, ehad, is a number but it means much more than simply the number one. It means God is one with creation, one with us, and one with everything around us. It is a reminder that God breaks into our midst not just now and then but rather God is continually among us. This is not a distant God, when read in the Hebrew the word translated as the Lord is actually the name of God, which even when read in Hebrew is replaced with the word Adonai out of respect, the God we are reminded of in the Shema has a name and a close relationship with us. In the Shema as in the image in Revelation, God and hope are here and now.
But this brings me back to my original question; living in a broken world how do we as Christians hold the reality of a God who is right with us? I think the answer resides in our everyday lives. Our spiritual practices are a great way to allow the breaking in of hope to our world. Our spiritual practices can act as that thing that does the breaking through, making space for the divine to enter, making room for the tree of life so to speak. When our prayer, our meditation, our hiking, our singing, our reading of the scriptures is at its best it brings us into contact with the hope described in Rev. 22. One way I personally connect that hope you have already seen this morning. I pray the Shema on my exhaling to connect myself with that hope, to connect myself with God. I suspect many of your own ways of fostering the connection with God and with hope. It is in these practices that we can find strength when the world seems so broken that the image of hope seems dim, it can reconnect us to the river of hope that is our connection with the divine.
The most ordinary of things can bring hope into our daily lives. The very earth itself has a way of quite literally providing hope and healing. In Reading, England the charity Thrive is using Gardening as a therapeutic practice for persons with a number of disabilities. Stuart, the care giver of his wife, Denise who is suffering dementia, says of her experience. “As she waters the garden, she waters herself. The work seems to reconnect her with herself. This ordinary garden has grown hope in both of us.”
As the hope of the divine breaks into our daily lives flows through us, it flows to others. As we live out of the hope and connection we experience with God we do things in our life that share that hope with those around us.
An example of this are friends of mine from PSR Hope Attenhofer and Gale Tompkins Bischel. This summer the went to the Arizona desert to work with the organization Humane Borders who was providing water for those crossing the desert so would not die of thirst along the journey. While this act seems so small to the people doing it, people make these kind of delivers every day, the fact is that it is saving lives. This small act of leaving water is a way in which the hope of the divine brakes through the brokenness of our worlds emigration policy. This water is in a very real way feeding the tree of life.
Now we may not have the opportunity to deliver water to the desert, we all have ways to provide hope to the world around us. In this very congregation we have people who help fight hunger at the supercenter each month. This action, no less than those of the church group in Arizona feeds the tree of life for the healing of nations. It is in these everyday acts that hope flows through us and to others. It is by sharing the hope that the divine instills in us that we begin to participate in the healing of the nations.
So when it comes down to it the image of the scripture today really is not discordant with our broken reality, but rather it is a vision of where to begin. How our reality may in fact be full of life and healing rather than brokenness. It is through making space in our ordinary existence that opens this hope that it may flow through us and be shared with others.
So may hope like the trees of life break through the concrete of our world into our here and now. Through our spiritual practice may we feel a river of hope flowing from God into us, and in our own everyday lives may hope in all the small ways flow to others; that we may truly begin to see the healing of the nations.
Amen
Monday, September 26, 2011
Friday, September 16, 2011
Empowering the Dis-empowered
I was recently shocked when I read about JCPenny selling t-shirt that suggested to young girls that being pretty and being smart are mutually exclusive. I was horrified that you girls and boys for that matter might take this message to heart. This got me thinking a lot about the kinds of messages we send by the things that we say and the things we do not say.
In the case of the JCPenny t-shirt many people spoke up and JCPenny did pull the t-shirt. My question is however is simply speaking up against this t-shirt, while the right thing to do, enough? The reality is the misogynistic expressed by this t-shirt is a part of the cultural zeitgeist, how then can we become active and not just reactionary against this injustice? The truth is that we need to have the courage to be continually putting out a message that says "You are not limited by what society tells you that you can be. You have the ability to the the thing that makes you most whole, that makes you fully human!" Yes, we do need to speak against the negative message, but just as important is the work of empowering, loudly proclaiming the positive message.
As a religious leader I am particularly concerned about this within the sphere of the church. For many years our scripture and faith have been wrongly used to limit people's potential, to dis-empower rather than empower. This means it is all the more important that we take on the call of God to let people know that God calls them to be the thing that makes them whole, fully human. That we want them to be empowered and we want to help them to break through the walls that keep them from being fully and authentically themselves.
We must do much more than say it as the church however, we must embody it. Just saying it does no good if our own structures continue to mirror those of the wider society. As long as there are those those are excluded we can speak of it all we want and it will ring hollow. We must follow the example of Jesus and draw the circle wider, giving human dignity and empowerment to those he met without that power, while challenging those with the power about their structures of dis-empowerment. The truth is as the church in America we must recognize that we are the ones with the power, so the scary (though I believe exciting) thing about being real about empowerment is that to do it we are going to have to be open to change.
This empowerment is an active pursuit in our society, because empowerment is not the status quo. It is counter-cultural to empower. We must begin to help raise each raise one another up, instead of looking down on those who have no one to give them a boost. Silence is simple not good enough as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King said " In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
In the case of the JCPenny t-shirt many people spoke up and JCPenny did pull the t-shirt. My question is however is simply speaking up against this t-shirt, while the right thing to do, enough? The reality is the misogynistic expressed by this t-shirt is a part of the cultural zeitgeist, how then can we become active and not just reactionary against this injustice? The truth is that we need to have the courage to be continually putting out a message that says "You are not limited by what society tells you that you can be. You have the ability to the the thing that makes you most whole, that makes you fully human!" Yes, we do need to speak against the negative message, but just as important is the work of empowering, loudly proclaiming the positive message.
As a religious leader I am particularly concerned about this within the sphere of the church. For many years our scripture and faith have been wrongly used to limit people's potential, to dis-empower rather than empower. This means it is all the more important that we take on the call of God to let people know that God calls them to be the thing that makes them whole, fully human. That we want them to be empowered and we want to help them to break through the walls that keep them from being fully and authentically themselves.
We must do much more than say it as the church however, we must embody it. Just saying it does no good if our own structures continue to mirror those of the wider society. As long as there are those those are excluded we can speak of it all we want and it will ring hollow. We must follow the example of Jesus and draw the circle wider, giving human dignity and empowerment to those he met without that power, while challenging those with the power about their structures of dis-empowerment. The truth is as the church in America we must recognize that we are the ones with the power, so the scary (though I believe exciting) thing about being real about empowerment is that to do it we are going to have to be open to change.
This empowerment is an active pursuit in our society, because empowerment is not the status quo. It is counter-cultural to empower. We must begin to help raise each raise one another up, instead of looking down on those who have no one to give them a boost. Silence is simple not good enough as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King said " In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
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